This book begins with a provocative paradox: George Fitzhugh of Virginia, one of the most eloquent defenders of Southern chattel slavery, appealed to a New York abolitionist for support. How can this be? The abolitionist in question, Charles Edwards Lester, had confessed that "he would sooner subject his child to Southern slavery, than have him to be a free laborer of England."

Our perception of life at Monticello has changed dramatically over the past quarter century. The image of an estate presided over by a benevolent Thomas Jefferson has given way to a more complex view of Monticello as a working plantation, the success of which was made possible by the work of slaves. At the center of this transition has been the work of Lucia "Cinder" Stanton, recognized as the leading interpreter of Jefferson’s life as a planter and master and of the lives of his slaves and their descendants. This volume represents the first attempt to pull together Stanton’s most important writings on slavery at Monticello and beyond.

Work songs, ritual or festive music, music and rhythms from slavery have significantly marked the American popular music. It shows influences of Congo in the Caribbean, Brazil, the United States. The songs of hope until the abolition Civil Rights Movement or the emergence of free jazz, music express these intense as human resilience that hope. They trace the path of a major socio-cultural events in our history.

Slavery has been endemic in Sudan for thousands of years. Today the Sudanese slave trade persists as a complex network of buyers, sellers, and middlemen that operates most actively when times are favorable to the practice.

Slavery is illegal throughout the world, yet more than twenty-seven million people are still trapped in one of history's oldest social institutions. Kevin Bales's disturbing story of slavery today reaches from brick kilns in Pakistan and brothels in Thailand to the offices of multinational corporations.

Despite its pervasive presence in the South Asian past, slavery is largely overlooked in the region’s historiography, in part because the forms of bondage in question did not always fit models based on plantation slavery in the Atlantic world.

Slavery and exploitation are alive and well in the UK. From factories and fields to high streets and high seas, investigative reporter Darragh MacIntyre reveals the extent to which exploited workers are embedded within our economy. In this hard-hitting documentary, MacIntyre uncovers a hidden world of vulnerable victims - not only those trafficked to the UK from abroad, but also a British citizen forced to work unpaid for years. Joining police raids on suspected traffickers, MacIntyre witnesses first hand the authorities' efforts to combat this growing problem. He discovers, alarmingly, that 80% of slavery crimes may be going undetected.

Contemporay debates about Muslim slavery occur in a context of fierce polemics between Islam and other belief systems. While Islamic groups had an ambivalent and generally muted impact on the legal repudiation of slavery, a growing religious commitment to abolition was essential if legislation was to be enforced in the twentieth century.